Ethiopia

Peter Alderley dabbed sweat off his drooping moustache as he warily surveyed the street outside the ramshackle café. ‘I shouldn’t even be here, you know,’ he said. ‘MI6 generally isn’t too happy about its officers taking unscheduled trips to foreign countries. If anyone finds out—’

‘Hey, everyone!’ Eddie suddenly cried, pointing excitedly at him. ‘British secret agent, right here! It’s Peter Alderley! Come on, quick, get his autograph and listen to him drone on about restoring his 1973 Ford Capri!’ None of the passing residents of Dubti, some forty miles from the border with Djibouti in Ethiopia’s northeastern corner, seemed remotely interested in the revelation, or even found anything particularly unusual about the presence of three Westerners in their town. While the country in general was hardly a tourist trap, the wildlife reserve and national park to the south meant that international visitors were not uncommon.

‘Eddie,’ Nina chided. He laughed and sat back.

‘Very funny,’ Alderley muttered. ‘And it’s a 1971, actually.’

‘We do appreciate this, Peter, really,’ Nina assured him. It was two days since they had left Switzerland, having contacted Alderley and on his advice travelled first to Slovenia before flying on via Egypt to the eponymous capital of Djibouti, where the MI6 officer met them for the road trip into the neighbouring country. Alderley’s contacts in both African nations had allowed them to make the journey without any official hassles – for a modest fee.

‘And we appreciate this little lot too,’ added Eddie, nudging a rucksack beneath their table.

Alderley winced. ‘Be careful with that!’

‘Why? It’s not going to blow up.’

The MI6 man’s expression didn’t inspire confidence. ‘Is it?’ Nina asked.

‘The actual explosives should be stable. But they’re . . . well, past their sell-by date, put it that way. I couldn’t exactly requisition them from the quartermaster at Vauxhall Cross! They’ve been tucked away here for years by someone I know. So I wouldn’t throw them around.’

‘What about the detonators?’ said Eddie.

‘Standard RC units – you’ll have used them before in the SAS. They’ve all got new batteries, but there’s still some risk of deterioration, and since they’re one-use items there’s no way to test them in the field – other than actually firing them, I suppose. As for the trigger –’ he took a device the size of a chunky mobile phone from the rucksack – ‘it’s as reliable as any other electronic device in sub-optimal conditions, so . . . caveat emptor.’ He gave Nina an apologetic smile.

Eddie took the trigger unit from him. ‘What’s the set-up?’

‘Simple enough, even for you.’ The Yorkshireman made a sarcastic face. ‘Five channels, controlled by the dial.’ Alderley indicated the control, around which were marked the numbers one to five and the words ‘Full’ and ‘Safe’. It was currently set to the latter. ‘The numbers are for individual detonators, obviously, and “Full” blows everything simultaneously. Just switch it on and push the red button. Boom. The range is up to about a mile.’

‘What about the blast radius?’

‘I’d say you want to be at least fifty yards clear – more if you’re taking out something that might produce shrapnel.’

‘We’ll definitely want to be more than fifty yards away, then,’ said Nina.

‘I see.’ Alderley took a sip from his bottle of Coca-Cola. ‘You’re really not going to give me any more than that? Even after everything I’ve done to get you here?’

She shook her head. ‘This will probably sound like a horrible spy cliché, but the less you know the better. The people we’re trying to avoid are extremely powerful.’

‘How powerful?’

‘Enough to have the ear of presidents.’

‘And bring down ex-presidents,’ Eddie added.

Alderley’s eyebrows flicked up. ‘Dalton?’ Nina nodded. ‘I was wondering what kicked that off. The Yanks usually let their former leaders get away with anything short of murder, so I thought something major had to be going on. You know, you two really do pick quite a high class of enemies.’

‘They seem to pick us,’ Nina sighed. ‘But I’d imagine they probably have prime ministers on their speed-dials as well. Which is why we wanted to keep you out of the loop.’

‘Well, if anyone at MI6 asks why I used my holiday allowance to make a last-minute excursion to Africa,’ said Alderley unhappily, ‘I’ll just have to come up with some convincing excuse. If one exists.’

‘Tell ’em you found a 1973 Capri head gasket on the Ethiopian eBay and had to collect it in person,’ suggested Eddie with a smirk.

‘It’s a ’71,’ came the irritable reply, before his face became more sombre. ‘But . . . you found out who was behind Mac’s death, so that’s why I’m taking the risk. I owe you that much. You helped lay him to rest.’

Eddie’s mood became equally downbeat as he remembered his friend and mentor. ‘He’s not properly laid to rest yet,’ he said. ‘Not until we stop these arseholes. And I take care of Stikes.’

‘This isn’t about revenge,’ Nina gently reminded him. ‘It won’t bring Mac back. And you were the one who always said that revenge isn’t professional.’

‘Stikes stopped it being professional when he made it personal. When he made it about family. It’s the same with soldiers, cops . . . probably spooks too,’ he said, with a look at Alderley, who nodded. ‘You fuck with someone’s family, then you deserve anything you get.’

‘Speaking of family,’ said Alderley, ‘I really should get back to mine.’ He finished his Coke and stood. ‘So good luck with . . . whatever the hell you’re doing.’

Nina also stood and shook his hand, then kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you for everything, Peter.’

‘Helping your husband put me in rather an in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound situation, so I thought I might as well go all-out. Try not to let the world get destroyed, eh?’

‘Not on my watch,’ said Eddie. ‘Thanks, Alderley.’ There was an awkward silence before the two men finally shared a brief handshake.

‘No kiss?’ said Alderley.

‘Go on, fuck off,’ said Eddie, but with a smile. The MI6 officer grinned, then exited the café. ‘Thought he’d never leave.’

‘Oh, stop that. And we’d better leave ourselves.’ Through his contacts, Alderley had arranged supplies and transport in the form of a battered old Land Rover.

Eddie picked up the rucksack containing the explosives. ‘Where exactly are we going?’

Nina made an uncertain face. ‘That’s a very good question.’

The Afar Depression is appropriately named. Not only does the huge area contain the lowest point in Africa, over five hundred feet below sea level, but it is also likely to bring misery to anyone entering it. One of the hottest places on earth, it is also one of the most desolate, a great expanse of desert where only the hardiest scrubby vegetation survives. Within its boundaries there are no roads and, beyond a few isolated villages and nomadic tribes, no people. Adding to its inhospitability is the very nature of the region, a widening geological rift producing a chain of active volcanoes and even one of the world’s few lava lakes.

The Land Rover was three hours out of Dubti, heading north by northwest, and even that small town now seemed like a metropolis in hindsight. The baking desert stretched endlessly away to the rippling horizon in all directions. The 4×4 had a GPS receiver on its dashboard, but it couldn’t provide Nina and Eddie with a countdown of the distance to their destination. The reason was simple: they didn’t actually know where they were going.

Not on a map, at least. Nina was providing directions, but that didn’t stop Eddie, driving, from giving her a dubious look as the Land Rover jolted across the stony plain. ‘You sure we’re going the right way?’

It was not the first time he had asked the question. ‘No, I’m not sure, Eddie,’ she said tiredly, taking a mouthful of unpleasantly warm water from a plastic bottle. ‘I have a feeling, that’s all.’

‘Trusting your feelings is fine for Jedi, but I’d be a lot happier with something a bit more definite.’

‘So would I, but it’s all there is. So we’ll have to make do.’

‘Can’t you even explain it better?’

‘No, Eddie, I can’t!’ She composed herself, taking another drink before replacing the cap. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’

‘Yeah, I know.’ He was silent for a moment, then with uncharacteristic hesitation said, ‘And . . . there’s something I want to say sorry for.’

‘What?’

‘When we were in Peru, and I found out about Nan . . . I blamed you for me not being able to see her again before she died. I shouldn’t have done. It wasn’t your fault, and I’m sorry.’

She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s okay. I know what you were feeling. I was the same when I learned that my parents had died.’

‘Even so, I shouldn’t—’

‘Eddie.’ She stroked his cheek. ‘It’s okay. Really.’

A small smile of gratitude. ‘Thanks.’

They drove on, Eddie surveying the parched desert. It was as inhospitable and empty a place as they had ever visited. ‘So, this feeling of yours,’ he said. ‘Wish I could figure out how it works.’

‘Yeah, me too!’ Nina regarded the desolation ahead. ‘I can’t really describe it. I just know somehow that it’s in this direction. If all life on the planet really did originate from the meteorite, then technically everybody is connected to it at a genetic level. The earth energy effect apparently lets me feel that more directly.’

‘I thought it only worked when you were holding the statues – and that you had to be somewhere where the energy lines connect.’

‘So did I. But this is more like an after-effect, an echo. It’s like . . .’ She struggled to find the words. ‘The best I can manage is that I can . . . feel it tickling my subconscious, I guess. It’s this way. Somewhere.’

‘An idea how far would be good.’

‘Afraid it’s not as precise as GPS. Sorry.’

They drove on. Another hour passed. Eddie squinted into the distance – then looked sharply round at something in his peripheral vision. ‘What?’ Nina asked.

‘There’s a plane over there.’ Sunlight glinted off a tiny dot in the sky to the northeast.

Nina’s fatigue was instantly replaced by concern. ‘The Group?’

He snorted. ‘How would I know? I don’t have bionic eyes. It’s a long way off, though.’

‘Where’s it going?’

Eddie stopped the 4×4 and stared intently into the blue void. ‘Might be on its way to Djibouti.’

‘Or it might be searching for the meteorite.’

‘Or us.’

Nina looked into the back of the Land Rover. The rucksack had been secured in the cargo bed, padded as best they could manage against the vehicle’s jolts by other bags. ‘So long as we have time to blow up the stone before they find us, that’s the most important thing.’

‘That, and us getting out alive – I think that’s pretty important too.’ He set off again. ‘Something I’ve been thinking about, though.’

‘What?’

‘Just how big is this meteorite? If it’s, I dunno, the size of a couch, or a car, we’ve got enough explosives to blow it to bits. But if it’s bigger, we might end up making the Group’s job easier. If all we can do is split it apart, then they can get right at the DNA or whatever’s inside it.’

It was a possibility Nina had also considered. ‘The best we can do is . . . the best we can do,’ she was forced to concede. ‘We just try to make it as hard for them as we possibly can. If they realise they’ve lost any chance to carry out their plan, well, like Glas said, they’re business people. Hopefully we can persuade them to free Larry without being vindictive.’

‘The Group might do that,’ said Eddie, grim-faced. ‘Stikes and Sophia won’t.’

‘Yeah, I was kinda hoping you wouldn’t point out the flaw in my one optimistic thought.’

The Land Rover continued across the empty expanse. Eddie lost sight of the aircraft, not knowing if it had changed course or was simply too far away. The terrain became harder, forcing him to slow down to navigate the rocky surface. Something appeared on the horizon ahead, a mirage rippling through the distorting heat-haze.

Nina peered at it. ‘Is that a hill?’

‘Hills, I think,’ said Eddie, as more shimmering peaks slowly rose into view. He noticed a faint column of what looked like steam drifting up from the tallest of them. ‘Or volcanoes.’ Nina’s lack of a reply made him suddenly very uneasy. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You’re not telling me . . .’

‘I think that’s where it is,’ she told him. The light but insistent tugging on her soul felt somehow more intense.

‘In a fucking volcano?’

‘It ties in with Nantalas’s vision. And it fits with what I felt when I put the statues together in Switzerland. If Nantalas experienced the same thing, she’d interpret it based on her beliefs. Remember what the text said in the Temple of Poseidon, about Hephaestus? He was the Greek – and Atlantean – god of volcanoes.’

‘So it is inside a volcano. Great. How are we supposed to get to it?’

‘I have absolutely no idea. I don’t suppose there’s a fireproof suit in our gear?’

‘It’s funny, but I don’t think Alderley thought of that.’

The mirage took on a solidity as they got closer. The volcano was not particularly high, but it dominated the surroundings, a near-perfect cone looming over its foothills. After the better part of an hour they were on its flanks, the steepness of the rocky slope finally outmatching even the Land Rover’s hill-climbing abilities. Eddie stopped the 4×4 on a small sloping plateau and got out, looking up at the steaming summit. ‘So what do we do?’ he asked. ‘Go to the top and look down into the crater to see if we can see the meteor? Or a secret base with a monorail. That’d be cooler.’

Nina smiled. ‘I doubt even Blofeld would be dumb enough to build a base inside an active volcano . . .’ She stopped, frowning slightly.

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure. It’s another feeling, that there’s something . . .’ She slowly turned, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she looked across the hillside at a higher spot.

‘The rock?’

‘I don’t know. I just feel some kind of connection to this place . . .’ Almost absently, she headed up the slope.

‘Hey, hold on!’ Eddie hurriedly extracted the rucksack from the Land Rover, along with another bag of basic survival equipment, and went after her. ‘Take some bloody water, at least.’ He gave her the bag.

‘Sorry. But whatever it is, I don’t think it’s far away.’

They angled up the volcano’s side. While it was still active, the clumps of vegetation in the dirt, along with geological features that would require centuries, if not millennia, to erode, showed that it hadn’t erupted for a considerable time. ‘One less thing to worry about,’ said Eddie when Nina pointed this out. ‘I don’t want to be hopping over streams of molten lava like Lara bloody Croft.’

‘You don’t quite have her figure,’ Nina joked. ‘But I don’t think we’ll—’

She stopped as she cleared a rise – and saw something ahead.

‘Well, Christ,’ Eddie said, amazed. ‘There is something here.’

Part of the hillside had suffered a landslide, a swath of rock reduced to rubble. But among the debris were stones that very clearly had not been shaped by the random forces of nature. Straight edges and right angles stood out from the scattered scree. Nina broke into a jog towards the broken remains. ‘There must have been something built on the volcano!’

‘Or in it,’ said Eddie as he followed, pointing uphill.

About a hundred feet higher up was a dark opening in the scar where an earthquake had shaken loose the surface. Nina hesitated, wanting to investigate the stonework first, but then headed for the exposed passage. This expedition was not about archaeology.

The smashed masonry had come from a structure marking the way into the volcano, but the almost circular tunnel behind it appeared natural. ‘It must be a lava tube,’ she said as they approached.

‘So what’s all this?’ Eddie asked as they reached more debris on the ground. ‘Did someone build an entrance to it, like a gatehouse or something?’

‘I’ll make an archaeologist out of you yet,’ she said, smiling. ‘But I don’t think it was an entrance. Look how the stones are spread out – it’s an even distribution across the whole opening. This wasn’t built to mark the way in. It was built to block it.’

‘Until the landslide opened it up.’

‘Looks like it.’ They reached the opening. Even though little of the barricade was still intact, what remained had a distinctively harsh aesthetic that immediately suggested an Atlantean influence to Nina.

Eddie peered down the tunnel. It was about twelve feet in diameter, curling away into darkness like the trail of a monster earthworm. He sniffed for any tell-tale hints of sulphurous gases, but smelled only the desert air.

A feeling that something wasn’t as it should be made him move a few steps into the tunnel and sniff again. Still nothing – but now he realised why. ‘What is it?’ Nina asked.

‘This tunnel goes down into the volcano, right? And we know it’s still active because of the steam blowing out of the top.’

‘Yeah?’

‘So how come air’s getting sucked into the tunnel?’ He returned to the ruined wall and scraped up a handful of fine dust, then let the grains trickle out from his hand. They didn’t fall straight down, but instead curved away, drawn towards the shadows.

Nina joined him. He was correct; there was a definite flow of air down the lava tube, and it was at odds with the prevailing wind outside. But she had no clue how to explain it. ‘At least we won’t have to worry about being gassed if we go down there.’

‘If?’ said Eddie with a knowing smile.

‘Yeah, we’re going down there. I just wanted to, y’know, preserve the illusion of choice.’

His smile broadened. ‘That vanished the moment I married you.’

‘Hey!’

He winked, then became more serious. ‘There should be a couple of torches in that bag. Let’s have a look.’

Nina found the pair of flashlights and gave one to her husband as she switched on the other and shone it down the passage. The curving walls were slightly ridged, producing the unsettling impression of being inside the ribcage of a snake. The lava tube changed shape as it progressed, its cross-section undulating from a teardrop to a squashed ovoid, but the volume of molten rock that had formed it seemed consistent; the ceiling was never lower than eight feet high. ‘Do you think it’s safe?’

Eddie placed a fingertip to his forehead as if channelling psychic powers. ‘Lemme consult my massive knowledge of volcanoes and say . . . I don’t have a fucking clue.’ She stuck out her tongue, making him grin again. ‘There isn’t molten lava gushing up it, so that’s a good start. And so long as the wind’s blowing down into it, we should be able to breathe okay. If it changes, though . . . We should have brought a canary in a cage.’

‘Poor birdie.’ She aimed the light at where the tunnel coiled out of sight. ‘Should we get the rest of the gear?’

He shook his head. ‘You’ve got the basics, and I’ve got the bombs. If we need anything else, we can always go back for it.’

‘Let’s hope we don’t need anything else.’

‘You think we’re going to find this meteorite just lying there?’

‘It’d be a nice change, wouldn’t it?’ She started down the shaft.

Eddie walked alongside her. ‘So, let me get this straight. This priestess, Nantalas, basically sinks Atlantis when she cocks up how to use earth energy, and the meteorite shoots off like an ICBM. She convinces the king not to kill her, but instead uses the statues to find it.’

‘Right. So they could make sure nobody ever tried to use the power of the gods again.’

‘Well, we know they were here. But just blocking off the entrance doesn’t seem like their usual way of doing things. The other Atlantean places we’ve found . . . they were big on booby traps, weren’t they?’

Nina stopped suddenly. ‘Oh, you had to remind me, didn’t you?’

‘Better now than when there’s a giant scythe swinging at your head.’

More cautiously, using the torch to check the curved walls above as well as the floor, she set off again. The entrance disappeared round a bend, dropping them into darkness as they continued deeper into the mountain. ‘I don’t know how much effort the Atlanteans who came here would have put into building their defences, though. They would have had other things on their mind.’

‘Like getting back home to save their families before Atlantis went glug-glug-glug.’

‘Yeah. Still, they obviously put some work into sealing the entrance – they could have just filled the tunnel with rocks, but they went to the trouble of constructing a wall.’

‘If they thought the meteorite was sent by the gods, maybe they thought it’d piss them off even more if they didn’t show respect by building a proper barricade,’ Eddie suggested.

‘I really am rubbing off on you! That’s exactly what I was thinking. So, when are you going to enrol for a degree course?’

‘The twelfth of never.’ They continued their descent, Eddie licking a finger and holding it up to check that the breeze was still blowing from behind them. It was. ‘So, they built a wall – did they build anything else down here?’

They rounded another bend – and halted as their torch beams fell upon something ahead.

Nina’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘I’d say . . . yes.’